Spark: Childhood

For the next couple weeks on the radio show, we’ll be taking a peek at Studio 360′s new book, Spark: How Creativity Works. It draws on ten years (!) of interviews with America’s most accomplished filmmakers, musicians, art, and others about what it takes to live a creative life. This week, Kurt talks with Julie [...]

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Goodbye, Hollywood (and Good Riddance)

Jon Robin Baitz was already a successful playwright when he went to Hollywood to create ABC’s Brother’s and Sisters. The show was a hit for Baitz, but turns out, the city was anything but: “It was a nightmare.  Just the fact that I came from New York and wrote sort of serious-ish plays, before I [...]

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360 Exclusive: Hot on the Trail of “Anonymous”

Anyone else feeling a little political déjà vu?  Fifteen years ago this month a salacious political novel called Primary Colors was published.  It offered a thinly veiled account of President Bill Clinton’s election campaign and was written by…well, no one knew. In spite of this, or perhaps, because of it Primary Colors became a huge [...]

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Spark: How Creativity Works

2011 is a big year for Studio 360.  We’re celebrating our tenth anniversary on the radio and online — time flies, we know — and we’re marking the milestone with a foray into another medium: the printed word. Spark: How Creativity Works will hit bookshelves on February 15.  Written by Studio 360′s long-time executive producer [...]

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Premiere Performance: Shara Worden, “We Added It Up”

On Thursday, January 27, Shara Worden will bring her synergetic mix of classical music, cabaret, and punk to Lincoln Center’s American Songbook series — and we’re thrilled that she’s given us  an exclusive sneak preview of a song she wrote for the event. Worden is probably best known for her classical/rock project My Brightest Diamond [...]

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B.D. Speaks!

Garry Trudeau – author of the landmark comic strip Doonesbury – stopped by the studio recently to talk with Kurt about 40 years of penning the ever-expanding Doonesbury universe.  He offered some great insight into the history of the Doonesbury characters, including B.D.’s service in Vietnam and Iraq, and on his own, real-life relationship with [...]

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Novelist’s Loner Protagonist is All Too Real in Tucson

Like the rest of the twitterati,  the novelist Walter Kirn quickly tried to make sense of the Arizona shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and several others. As events unfolded, Kirn’s tweets stood out. By Sunday night, Kirn realized the uncanny similarities alleged shooter Jared Loughner shared with Kent Selkirk, the socially-inept-loner-on-the-internet protagonist of Kirn’s novel, [...]

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How Matt Damon Got to 30 Rock

This week, Matt Damon stops by the studio to talk about his career in movies – from his role as the windbag LaBeouf in “True Grit” to his impressive improvised monologue in “Saving Private Ryan.”  But one of our favorite appearances has to be his recent foray on NBC’s “30 Rock.” He plays Liz Lemon’s [...]

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Huck Finn Loses the ‘N’ Word

One hundred and twenty-five years after The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was first published, a new edition of Mark Twain’s classic is purging some of the book’s most objectionable language. On Monday Publishers Weekly reported that NewSouth Books will replace the word “nigger” with the word “slave,” in a new edition due mid-February.  They will also [...]

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360 Staff Pick: H. L. Mencken’s Prejudices

Prejudices: The Complete Series by H.L. Mencken This is the handsomest set of the essays that made H. L. Mencken famous. Mencken was indignant about a lot of things, and he did not hold fire. Many of his reference points are forgotten, but it’s still bracing to read Mencken’s vitriolic attacks on what people of [...]

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